TUI gets online analytics

Tealeaf to increase holiday bookings

By Miya Knights

June 6, 2007

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TUI UK, part of the largest tourism and services group in the world, has selected website analytics technology to help it better manage and understand the expectations and behaviour of visitors to the www.thomson.co.uk site.

The insights the Tealeaf’s CX suite provide will help TUI UK further improve its industry-leading service and increase online holiday bookings.

With 850,000 consumers visiting the site every week, it was critical to TUI UK that it is available at all times. Using the cxView dashboards from the customer experience management vendor, TUI UK is presented with real-time visibility into its holiday booking website operations. Tealeaf cxImpact can also send alerts when any problems within the site prevent customers from completing bookings.

TUI UK also recently introduced a new “powersearch” facility which presents customers with holidays based on a number of components, including flight, car, accommodation, that have been dynamically packaged, from a range of sources, based on their individual query. By capturing details of each customer interaction with the website, Tealeaf is helping the tour operator better understand customer behaviour, while also identifying obstacles that negatively impact conversions.

“Tealeaf is the only solution available that could provide us with the depth and breadth of meaningful information about why customers are prevented from booking holidays via our website,” explained George Nolan, e-commerce manager for TUI UK Holidays.

“Despite the size and complexity of our website, Tealeaf was up and running in only a few days and quickly providing us with invaluable insights that help us turn more ‘lookers into bookers’.”

It is not yet clear whether the technology will have a role to play in the newly merged First Choice Holidays and TUI business, having been given conditional clearance by the European Commission (EC) to join forces this week.

TUI's Thomson Holidays has been the biggest UK tour operator since 1974 but the combined company will have to sell TUI's Irish business, Budget Travel according to the EC. It follows more consolidation in this industry sector recently, when the Commission cleared Thomas Cook to buy package holiday operator, MyTravel last month.

The new firm, TUI Travel, will have £12 billon in annual sales and 27 million customers.